1) Perl's data structures (the equivalent of PMCs) been heavily optimized, to date Parrot's haven't been
2) Parrot's Array and SArray values all accept mixed-type data, which perl's arrays do *not* do, and as such have some extra speed hits that perl arrays don't.
And on top of that it turns out that the basic array class and everything that inherits from it uses the sparse list code in list.c, for even more slowdown. I'm impressed things are running as fast as they are with all that overhead. All of which is good for the whole "not dying because someone's done a $foo[time] access" but less good when looking to move fast.
A more specialized, less flexible base array type is in order here, I think.
--
Dan--------------------------------------"it's like this"-------------------
Dan Sugalski even samurai
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